Two hundred years ago, London became the first city to surpass Rome in size and population, the first modern city to reach a million inhabitants and the world’s first global city. By 1900 it was the imperial capital of a third of the globe, the first megacity. Since then, megacities have been springing up across the world, from São Paulo to Shanghai.
Yet somehow, London has managed to maintain its status as one of the two capitals of capital (along with New York, the first city – in 1925 – to overtake it in population) and as a place where people want to be. It is a tourist city, a business city, a city of shopping and a city of eye-wateringly expensive real estate – still the default luxury choice for wealthy overseas investors.
This year the Olympics are shining a light on the city’s extraordinary ability to reinvent itself, to build new layers and interweave them with the complex, consistently compelling layers of a 2,000-year-old centre.